Running like a leopard

Jack: What are your legs?
Archie: Springs. Steel springs.
Jack: What are they going to do?
Archie:  Hurl me down the track.
Jack:  How fast can you run?
Archie:  As fast as a leopard.
Jack:  How fast are you going to run?
Archie: As fast as a leopard!
Jack:  Then let's see you do it!
--Gallipoli (movie)

Seattle was sunny today, with temperatures in the high fifties.  Flowers and flowering trees were in bloom; spring was upon us.  And it was my birthday.  The signs were all auspicious.  I needed to run.  It's been two or three years since I last did any serious running, after an Achilles tendon strain in 2006 ended many years of regular running.

I had prepared for the arrival of this urge, and for this sort of spring day.  I had ordered new running shoes, which arrived Friday.  Today was the day for the test.

I'm no leopard.  It had been a while, as I say, since I'd run.  But I felt as leopard-like as I had any right to feel. Running fast, but not too fast.  Breathing hard, but not too hard.  Skimming through Interlaken Park, along a curvy lane that's closed to traffic in places, and infrequently trafficked in others.  Feeling feral.

Feral, perhaps, but not really feline.  No, rather than a leopard, I felt more like myself as a skinny pre-teen boy.  I always wore leather shoes to school -- not a school rule, but my mother's rule.  But, come summer vacation, we kids all got Keds.  Or some other brand of "tennis shoes."  We'd get 'em home, put 'em on, and run outside --  dancing across the lawns and sidewalks like wild maniacs.  The tennis shoes were like magic.  I felt I could run like the wind, jump like a gazelle. 

Frankly, I guess I really felt neither wind-like nor gazelle-like today.  Those years following the age of eleven have, in fact, taken something of a toll.  But everything's relative, right?  Compared to how I feel wearing my usual light hiking shoes, I felt light-footed as a ballet dancer. 

I've exhausted my fund of similes.  Let's just say that running in new running shoes is exhilarating.  It brings back those joys of being eleven years old at the very beginning of summer vacation -- joys that, in retrospect, are wasted on an eleven-year-old.

Now, I just have to remind myself every two or three days how good the run will feel once I start running.  If only my memories of today's run are strong enough to trump my usual inertia ...

Updates as events warrant.

Putting it in perspective

Some of us can remember the old pull-down World maps at the front of our classrooms, maps on which half the countries were colored pink.  Those pink lands made up the British Empire.

Empires aren't fashionable these days -- except, perhaps, with neo-cons like Dick Cheney -- but the British Empire has receded far enough into history to exert a nostalgic pull on our affections.  We think of explorers (like Dr. Livingston) opening up new areas in Africa and Asia.  We visualize military officers crisply dressed in red-coated uniforms, pioneer families in Canada and Australia, the invincible British fleet, Indian "durbars" presided over by Viceroys -- and, more generally, the entire Victorian aristocratic backdrop of boys' schools, overstuffed furniture, leather books, long letters home from the colonies, and London itself as the center of civilization.

My mind wanders thusly because I have just finished reading Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain, a new book by Oxford historian John Darwin.   In one readable volume, Dawson tells us all we ever thought we wanted to know about the British Empire -- but it's also made me want to learn even more.

As an American schoolboy, I was taught a specific point of view with respect to what we call the American Revolution.  Indoctrination in a national religion, I suppose.  Even in college, when I took a course analyzing the events leading up to 1776 from a nationally known expert in the field, the facts were studied in far greater detail, but their worldwide context was not notably broadened.  In all my course work, at whatever level, it was assumed that American Independence was a central event in world history. 

Professor Darwin's history is taught from a Briton's point of view.  It is not obviously biased, anymore than my college course was obvously biased.  But from Britain's viewpoint, the battle against the American colonists was merely one aspect of a dangerous period in British history.  After Britain's unexpected territorial gains at the Peace of Paris (1763), ending the Seven Years War with France, Spain, and Austria (which we parochially describe as the "French and Indian War"), she found herself overextended overseas, and faced with potentially dangerous forces on the European continent.  Desperate for money, Britain imposed the notorious Stamp Tax on the American colonies, forcing us to help pay for the British troops that had protected us against the French -- a tax that led to the Declaration of Independence.

While trying to reimpose order in the colonies by blockading its shipping, the British faced a renewed threat from France, Spain, and Holland.  These nations were joined by Russia in 1780, thus including virtually all of Europe in a demand that the British blockade against the colonies not affect neutral shipping. Britain's navy was greatly outnumbered by those of the allied nations, and the British Isles themselves were threatened.

[I]n 1782, [Britain] regained control of the Atlantic.  But for the American war, it was too little too late.  In the critical phase when its Atlantic lifeline was cut, Cornwallis's army, their main American strike-force, was squeezed into surrender at Yorktown [1781].  With no will to go on, the British went to the conference table desperate to break up the coalition against them.  Conceding American independence was the only sure way to end the colonies' alliance with France -- the worst of all worlds -- and preserve their commercial connection with Britain.

My American education never suppressed knowledge of the historical context in which independence occurred.  But we were taught history as perceived by our forebears living in Massachusetts and Virginia, for whom the European balance of power was of merely incidental interest -- not history as it might have been perceived by an interested Martian hovering overhead.  Darwin is no Martian, but his perception as an historian whose fascination lies with the development of the entire British Empire adds the necessary context.  From Britain's point of view, London had bent over backwards trying to placate the American colonists, at least insofar as possible without surrendering whatever advantage was derived from the colonies' status as imperial possessions.

The American war is but a minor theme in Dawson's story, a prelude to the later development of what now usually comes to mind when we hear the term, "British Empire" -- an amazing story of commercial and military success for which Britain's victories at Trafalgar (1805) and Waterloo (1815) were the necessary but not sufficient conditions.  But lessons learned in dealing with the American colonies affected Britain's policies in dealing with future colonies, especially those that Dawson calls "settler societies" -- Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.  And the chapters dealing with India -- the jewel in the Crown -- could be read alone as a fascinating cautionary tale, a mixture of avarice and nobility, cruelty and compassion, recklessness and caution.

How the Empire developed after 1815 -- primarily as a means to protect  British commercial investment and exploitation -- and how a small island parlayed an early industrial revolution, supported by large domestic reserves of coal, into one of the largest and most successful empires, commerical, financial and governmental, the world has ever seen, is the primary story of Dawson's book.  As is the sobering -- to us on this side of the pond -- coda illustrating how Britain fell from world domination within not much more than a generation.

As an American, I like to recall the fable of the blind pygmies trying to understand their first encounter with an elephant.  Our history classes, perhaps, have taught us to inspect carefully the elephant's leg and conclude that an elephant is a form of hairy-barked tree.  Dawson's book shows us the entire beast.

Sixth anniversary

Six years ago today, I published my first blog post.  A boy on a haystack, wondering what to write about.  So young.  So naive.

Now, here we are.  Six years later, with 577 published posts under my belt (plus one that I published and later depublished, because I was uncomfortable with the sort of attention it was receiving!).

It's been fun.  In general, I've tried to dash off roughly a couple of posts a week.  Sometimes I write with great enthusiasm; other times, I really can't think of much to say.  But it all averages out.

In case you're curious, over the past couple of years, I've been averaging about two thousand hits per month -- from virtually every nation in the world -- which surprises me a bit.   Some hits merely represent surfers attracted to a particular post's photo, but that's ok, too.   No matter what they're seeking, it's fun to realize that readers in Iraq, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Kazakhstan are among those looking at my blog, together with the more expected readers from the U.S., the U.K., Russia, India, Canada and Germany (the top six sources of my readership).

I fully expect to be celebrating a seventh anniversary a year from now, with another ninety or a hundred posts added to my total.  Thanks for checking in occasionally.

Talking to your opponents

The United States has imposed sanctions on Cuba for over 52 years.  So far as I can tell, the sanctions have accomplished nothing, other than condemn the Cuban people to poverty.  What were they intended to accomplish?  Does anyone remember?  Does anyone have any idea of what it would take -- what Cuba would have to do -- to end the sanctions?

I doubt it.  Whatever our original objectives, if  any were ever actually formulated, the winning of Cuban-American votes in Florida has been the only real concern for administration after administration, both Democratic and Republican.

Let's not repeat the Cuban fiasco in Iran.

In an Op-Ed article in today's New York Times, Professor Vali Nasr¹ suggests that we may have reached an optimum time at which to negotiate an agreement with the Iranian government.  He argues that the gradual tightening of sanctions to date has had the desired effect, that the Iranians are ready to deal, and that we should conduct serious negotiations with the objective of restricting Iran's ability to enrich uranium to weapons grade level, while permitting lower grade enrichment for domestic use in nuclear power plants.

As I understand our stated objectives, such a deal would achieve those objectives.   Professor Nasr fears, however, as do I, that, instead, we intend to continue tightening sanctions to force a total "surrender" on the part of the Iranian government.  Or, I might add, a "regime change," analogous to our probable half-century hopes, however vague, that we might force Fidel Castro out of office.

As Nasr notes, sanctions are more popular than serious negotiations with American voters.  But we expect our govenment to conduct foreign affairs with some degree of sophistication beyond that of the voting public, while still remaining democratically responsible to that public.  This expectation requires a certain amount of tightrope balancing, I agree.  But it is an expectation strongly supported by that conservative icon, Henry Kissinger.  And we might look at the history of the British Foreign Office, whose record, while not perfect, has demonstrated greater professionalism -- on average -- than has that of our own State Department.

Iran is not Cuba.  Ruining Cuba for half a century harmed only the Cubans.  Ruining Iran -- either by sanctions or by use of force -- will destabilize the largest, most modern, and most sophisticated Islamic nation in the Middle East (except, possibly, Turkey), a nation that has its own security concerns relative to most of its Islamic neighbors, arising out of Iran's "heretical" Shi'ite faith.  And, we need to keep in mind that these security concerns have been intensified by an unfortunate history of past American actions, as in the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88. 

Successful negotiations require (1) knowing precisely your own objectives; (2) understanding the probable primary objectives of the other party; and (3) understanding the hopes and fears that may affect the rationality of the decision-making of the other party.  I'm not confident that those actually in charge of American foreign policy -- under either the Obama or earlier administrations -- have a good conscious grasp on any of these considerations.

As Nasr suggests:

And rather than offering only vague promises that serious concessions might be rewarded someday by dropping all the sanctions as a package, Washington should offer to do away with specific sanctions, piece by piece, in exchange for specific Iranian concessions.  In that way, both sides might begin dismantling the most dangerous aspects of Iran's nuclear program in incremental, verifiable ways.

Iran has legitimate security concerns.  Iran has legitimate economic ambitions to develop sources of nuclear energy.  Iran may or may not have, or have had, ambitions to develop a nuclear military capacity for either offensive or defensive purposes.  We need to untangle these various goals in our own mind, and find a solution that permits Iran to accomplish its legitimate objectives in ways short of becoming a nuclear military power.
---------------------------

¹Vali Reza Nasr is Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

Footloose and fancy free -- II

American University, Beirut

What the heck -- I'm still not feeling original.  Here's the final entry in my journal, from unedited longhand scribblings.  As you'll see, the journal ends with my first day in Beirut -- with maybe the most interesting week of the trip still to come. 

Maybe I ran out of authorial steam.  Maybe I was just too busy staying fed, housed and out of jail.  (Not a figure of speech -- I was arrested during a one-day sidetrip to Damascus, for taking photos that were unflattering to the proud people and nation of Syria.)  

Leaving Beirut several days later, I took the bus to Istanbul -- a wonderful city that, after my visit to Syria and Lebanon, seemed quite European.  I spent several days there before flying to Rome and continuing by train to Amsterdam, where my charter flight back to Seattle awaited me.

Thursday, August 13, 1970

Events happened quickly.  Arriving in Limassol involved an enormous amount of hassle at immigration -- the formalities taking place before we were allowed to disembark.  Everyone complained, even the usually unflappable British.  You're aware that Cyprus isn't really prepared for mass tourism in any way similar to Greece.  Almost everyone on the ship was either Greek or Cypriot, or a Britisher on vacation or visiting friends -- and the British were a very small minority.

Found a travel agent -- Scottish girl, six years in Cyprus -- and discovered that there would be no ship to Beirut for six days.  So on the spur of the moment, decided on a flight.  She got me my reservation -- cost about £9½ -- and put me in a shared taxi to Nicosia, after buying me a Coke.

Interesting ride -- very hot, even the wind.  Same Mediterranean type surroundings, but a bit lusher near the coast.  Amazed at how many road signs were in English -- especially the "dining and dancing" variety.  Could see that the British had been entertaining themselves on Cyprus for a long time.  Passed several armed U.N. checkpoints, but no one seemed to pay them any heed.

Arrived at Nicosia Airport with about a half-hour to spare -- actually, though, we left late -- and went quickly through customs again and filled out a couple of postcards.  I needed some proof I'd actually been there.  Then, before I knew it, we were off -- sat next to a Jordanian teenager on an M.E.A. flight -- many English.  Just had time to eat some very sugary -- but surprisingly good -- candies and drink a glass of orange juice -- i.e., 35 minutes -- and we were landing in Beirut.

Met a couple girls at the airport -- American -- whose fathers worked  at the American University.  They filled me in, as we waited in lines, on various tips for survival in Lebanon.  Took a cab directly to the YMCA -- LL.7 [seven Lebanese pounds, or "lire"] -- and here I am.

Well -- it's something else, all right.  I'm not sure yet quite what generalizations I could make.  In many ways, it's the most Americanized place I've been, not excluding Amsterdam -- especially here in the university district.  Bookstores carrying many of the same texts as at home, hamburger stands with milk shakes, banana splits, pizza -- the whole all-American bit.  Uncle Sam's Restaurant is practically an inexpensive Denny's.  Had fried eggs this morning, believe it or not.  Why live European when I'm no longer in Europe?

On the other hand, the Eastern influence is very marked.  Downtown, you run into men in fezes, in Arab head dresses, in whole Arab gowns, in Turkish type clothes, stocking caps.  Women often in mid-calf peasant dresses with shawls over their heads.  One woman I've seen in complete veil -- couldn't even see her eyes.  Most, of course, are in Western dress -- very like Italy and Greece.  But in the downtown market area, this majority becomes rather slim, if it exists.

Just about every sign that you'd be interested in is in Arabic and English, or sometimes French.  Even the license plates are biliteral.

The markets are fantastic.  Everything imaginable for sale.  Meat carcasses hanging like skeletons, partially de-fleshed.  Fruit juice stands, packed with all kinds of fruits, and especially carrots.  Beirut must be the home of the Waring blender.  Passed one café and found it filled with grizzled old men smoking their water pipes -- tobacco I trust.

One of the guys in the dorm room is French, but speaks good English.  He motored all over the Middle East, including Iran and Iraq.  He is very down on Beirut -- thinks it is completely uninteresting.  And doesn't care for the allegedly money-hungry attitude of the natives.  I mentioned, "There seem to be a lot of TV antennas around here."  "Yeah, but it's not like in Europe or America.  The Lebanese would rather sip coffee and talk."  "Well, that's good."  "Yes, that's good -- but what do they talk about?  I don't know any Arabic, but when I listen to their conversations, all I hear is 'lire, lire, lire'!"
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Ok, I promise no more self-quotations.  My next post, whenever it arrives, will be an original essay.

Footloose and fancy free

Acropolis at Lindos

Last month, I published a post discussing Durrell's memoir of his days on the island of Rhodes, as part of the British occupation forces in 1945: "Reflections on a Marine Venus."  I mentioned that I myself had first visited Rhodes as a young vagabond, backpacking around the Eastern Mediterranean. I was a kid with no planned itinerary and six weeks to kill before my return flight. 

Today, I ran across my journal of those travels.  Not having any ideas for a more interesting original post, I thought I'd give you an excerpt from my now-ancient journal -- a few lines describing some of my initial impressions of Rhodes, written at a time when I was somewhat adrift, uncertain, and apprehensive about my future life and career.

Self-plagiarism!

Saturday, August 8, 1970

The entry into Rhodes harbor on Thursday was extremely impressive, the Palace looming in the background, and the three wiindmills, the bandshell, the white agora, and various Moorish-looking buildings in the foreground.  Hiked in front of the Old City into the Mandraki, and followed the signs to the tourist office.  Got the address of a hotel with bath for 64 drx [drachmas][about $2] .  Had to carry my pack clear back to the other side of town, and then couldn't find the hotel.  Kept askiing for "HO-TEL CON-GO" from passers-by, and eventurally located it -- hot, thirsty, and exhausted.  Oh, let me tell you, there are times when reservations at the Hilton sound appealing.  But there are compensations.

Spent the afternoon just wandering around sans guidebook, getting a feeling for the area, taking some random pictures. Had moussaka and salad dinner on the waterfront, then went to see "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (!) (with Greek subtitles).

Next day decided to switch to the youth hostel, which involved some more searching.  Finally got my gear transferred and 12 drx a night paid.  The manager speaks Italian and was delighted to be able to converse with me.  She thought I must be from California -- evidently mistook me for a paesano.  [ed. note 2013:  yeah, right!]

Went over the sights more carefully this time.  Palace of the Grand Master, the Hospital (now museum -- very impressive building; I really got a feeling of the history from it).  Spent siesta period on the beach, stretched out on the sand letting the breezes blow over me.  At one café, I ran into the Dutch and German guys I had met on the boat to Mykonos -- funny how often something like that happens.

When I came back to the hostel, I met the guy in the bunk below mine -- he's from Dallas.  We had dinner together and prowled through some of the shops in the Old City. ...  Ed had just gotten back from a one-day excursion to Marmara, Turkey, where he'd spent $100 [ed. 2013: about $600 in today's dollars!] on various gifts -- especially sheepskin coats.

This morning I was up at 7, had breakfast and killed time sitting on the breakwater, staring at the city, trying to impress it indelibly on my mind.  At 9, the bus left for Lindos, I aboard it.   A magnificent drive, through rugged Old West scenery and over evergreen-covered hills with glimpses of the sea from time to time.  Lindos is a beautiful place.  ...  I began the climb up to the Acropolis.  Someone said the Greek ruins were a temple to Apollo [ed. 2013: actually, Athena], which seems wholly approperiate, considering the beauty and sunniness of the location, but I unfortunately didn't have a guidebook.  Very impressive Doric columns, some leaning and looking as though they had been rather shakily reconstructed -- just a guess.  Surrounding the temple are fortifications of the same style as those here in [the city of] Rhodes, which seemed to make the flat-topped rock impregnable.

The view was breathtaking.  Wandered all around, looking off in many directions.  Finally, sat on a wall and looked down on the deep blue sea, light shimmering in bright specks on the water, the gold cliffs dropping sheer to the sea, mottled with dark shadows.  I must have sat there at least half an hour, mulling over life.  I decided that if I could be sitting in this place, at this time of my life, seeing what I did, feeling what I did, the kind of person that I am -- then I had managed to blunder into a lot of right decisions at various places in my life, and I had no regrets, whatever the future might hold.

Pretty smug, huh?
--------------------------------
A year later, I found myself starting law school.  It was all downhill from that point on!

Tax time as recreation

Passive activity income does not include the following.
**Income from an activity that is not a passive activity.
--IRS instructions for Form 8582

Devoted readers of this publication may find it hard it to believe that its suave and erudite author once dabbled in the mystic arts of higher math -- joyfully dirtying his hands with complex variables, double and triple integrals, Laplace transforms and Euler functions.

Nothing remains of this arcane knowledge, alas -- merely memories of terms -- but my early fascination with numbers may help explain something about me today:  to wit, the reason I do my own taxes and actually enjoy it.

I would never give my finances to H&R Block, let alone to a more sophisticated CPA.  Not just because I'm too cheap -- as indeed I am -- but because I myself enjoy untangling the cunning little webs that the IRS weaves throughout its volumes of forms and publications, all designed to "help" us through the tax-paying process.

I enjoy not only the intellectual challenge of trying to understand exactly what the IRS has in mind by its labyrinthine interpretations of the equally labyrinthine tax code, but also the opportunity to annually puzzle over just what has been happening during the previous year to Rainier96's Ship of Finance as she glided through the treacherous Seas of Insolvency in perpetual quest of the Hidden Isles of Unlimited Liquidity. 

I don't mind paying a bit more in taxes if I unexpectedly discover that I'm -- as a friend so strikingly emailed me this week -- "rolling in dough and swimming in bucks like Scrooge McDuck."  Such a happy denouement, unfortunately, rarely presents itself, but sometimes I do find myself a bit less destitute than anticipated, always a cause for rejoicing.

So I spent the better part of six hours yesterday preparing a gawd-awful number of forms.  (Over my lifetime, I've so conducted my affairs that the complexity of my tax reporting today is totally disproportionate to any amount of taxes conceivably at risk.)  While six hours (essentially working for the government at no pay) might bother some -- a bit of that time, of course, was spent trying to find documents I knew I had somewhere, but couldn't quite seem to locate -- my own struggles during those six hours were fun. More challenging and the results more satisfying than if I'd sat on a park bench doing New York Times crossword puzzles.

And so.  Voilá!  My forms are all typed out: neat, tidy, and elegant.  I'm so pleased. So proud!

De gustibus non est disputandum, right?

And after all -- I do only do it once a year. 

Tear down this Wall!

Tiny section of the
"Great Wall" along
Montlake Boulevard 

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall ..."
--Robert Frost

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"    
--Ronald Reagan

Nearly every day, I walk down Montlake Boulevard from the Montlake Bridge as far as the Hec Edmondson basketball pavilion, before crossing over to the campus proper.  Since 2008, each such walk has taken me, for most of that distance, alongside a construction wall. 

The wall separates me from the on-going construction of the UW light rail terminal.  The wall -- although merely a chain-link fence layered with plastic sheeting -- is sufficient to totally obstruct my view of whatever interesting activities are occurring on the other side.

The station won't be open until 2016.  Presumably, the wall will continue blocking views until then.

If my safety were the reason for the wall, I wouldn't object.  But the wall, while sufficient to keep me from wandering into the site, hardly seems substantial enough to protect me on the sidewalk from any dangerous activities within. Why not simply a chain link fence? 

At first, the wall incorporated a couple of transparent plastic windows through which one could get a somewhat awkward glance at some of the construction activity.  Those windows have since disappeared.

Contiguous with the light rail "wall," and continuing from the light rail project to Hec Ed, is the on-going construction of the new Husky Stadium.  Here there is also a protective fence, covered with canvas.  But you can see through gaps in the canvas.  Furthermore, there are large gaps in the wall, allowing for vehicle access, where I can very nicely watch the rapid progress on the stadium, at least insofar as visible from the sidewalk. 

But who knows what goes on behind the transit "Great Wall," as its graphics call itself.  Infant sacrifices?  Worship of heathen gods?  Construction workers lying in the sun instead of working?  In the absence of known data, my brain grinds away fitfully, spinning out its absurd fantasies.

Don't get me wrong.  I love rapid transit.  I love light rail.  I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of trains in the university district.  But eight years is a long time for a large expanse of activity to be walled off from view, for no apparent reason.

So I plead. Nay, demand: Mr. Whoever, tear down this wall!  (Or at least puncture some more windows in it. Please?)

Still going strong

I don't like Scotch.  Or, as a Scotsman would say, "I don't like whisky."  Except he'd never, ever say that, would he?

I don't like Scotch, but I've always been delighted at the sight of the Johnnie Walker logo.  "Born 1820, still going strong."  Today's version of the logo is a somewhat abstract or idealized version of its classical self, but still recognizably Johnnie. 

Neither liking Scotch nor drinking it, I hadn't thought much about Johnnie Walker -- whose ads no longer fill our better magazines as they once did -- until I came upon a column by "Charlemagne," writing in last week's Economist.  Charlemagne was primarily interested in pointing out that the makers of this highly successful whisky want to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom, and keep the United Kingdom in the European Union.  But he devotes a paragraph to Johnnie Walker's history, and to Britain's ability to distribute the beverage by merchant ship "to the ends of the British empire."

I was intrigued.

John Walker was born, according to the whisky's own website, near Kilmarnock, Scotland, south of Glasgow.  In 1805, not 1820.  But when his dad died in 1819, the family scraped together £537.15 (my goodness, folks, how anachronistic! -- back in 1819 that would have been £537 and 3 shillings!) to buy a grocery for 14-year-old John to manage.  By 1825, John's store was selling everything from stationery to home-made whisky.  When rail lines reached Kilmarnock in 1844, John began trading wholesale throughout the country.

His son Alexander took over the business when John died in 1857 (lives were shorter in those days).  At that time, whisky represented less than ten percent of the firm's sales. In 1860, "John Walker and Sons" began bottling blends (blends having been illegal until that year) in square bottles -- as they still are -- paying commissions to sea captains to sell the cargo around the world.  By 1906, the business, now run by Alexander's sons, was selling three blends: White Label, Black Label and Red Label.

But -- and here comes the big moment, as far as I'm concerned -- in 1908, cartoonist Tom Browne sketched "The Striding Man" on the back of a menu. The illustration showed a prosperous dandy (although probably not 14-year-old Johnnie) as he might have been dressed in 1820. His drawing became one of history's first globally-recognized advertising icons.

The rest of the Johnnie Walker history is merely brand puffery, as far as I'm concerned.  But I am interested in the fact that, over the years, Johnnie Walker has been sold in a variety of blends with a variety of labels:  besides the original red, black and white, there have been green, gold, platinum, and blue labels -- plus nonhued Premix/One and Johnnie Walker Swing.  Green Label was phased out in 2012, but you can still  buy all other blends at your favorite liquor store.

Sadly, the company shut down its facilities in Kilmarnock, its birthplace, last year, and its product is now produced in three other locations in Scotland.

In a changing world, where famous names seem to drop like flies, it's reassuring to note that Johnnie Walker (born 1820) is still going strong: smirking, striding and strutting.  I'll toast his good health and future longevity. 

With a gin and tonic.

Beyond understanding

Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
--J. B. S. Haldane

I'm reading Revelation Space, the first book of a science fiction pentalogy by Alastair Reynolds.  I'm reading it, quite frankly, solely because of a strong recommendation from a nephew. 

I'm only a third of the way through the first book, and I've made it clear to myself, if to no one else, that life is short and I feel myself under no obligation to continue reading beyond this first book.  But the book so far is amazing -- both in the imagination displayed by the author (a British writer with a Ph.D in physics and astronomy), and the detail with which he furnishes his universe.  This is no slapdash piece of writing by an author who has come up with something he considers to be a clever plot, and who rushes to dramatize that plot as quickly as possible.

The story takes place five centuries from now, in a universe whose peoples are clearly descended from those of us living on 21st century Earth, and who share our human fears and ambitions, but whose daily lives are as different from ours as ... well, as ours from Shakespeare, I suppose.  Far more different, really, which is logical once one extrapolates the ever accelerating rate of technological change five more centuries into the future.

I may well review the book and/or the entire series at some future date.  Not now, of course. Not while I still have two-thirds of the initial volume to read.

The reason for this post at this time is to verbalize my appreciation for the imagination that Reynolds displays, right from the first page.  His book is, of course, no Buck Rogers novel -- simply a showpiece for some cool rocket technology.   Reynolds's writing recalls to mind the Haldane quote at the top of this post.  Already, the initial novel has revealed ideas and concepts about the capabilities of the human mind far more foreign to how we think at present than my use of my Kindle would seem to an ancient Greek.  I know it's cheating, but a quick scan of Wikipedia contains the following foretaste:

The Revelation Space universe contains elements of Lovecraftian horror, with one posthuman entity stating explicitly that some things in the universe are fundamentally beyond human or transhuman understanding.

Yes, it's fiction.  Nothing in the series corresponds with what really will happen in the future.  Except -- first, I have no doubt that the future will be very different from the present, but that, as Reynolds suggests  -- so long as we remain human -- certain constants will continue to exist in human behavior.

And secondly:  That the Universe will forever contain mysteries beyond our mind's power to grasp --  aspects that are "queerer than we can suppose."  I find this attractive in many ways.  I also find it ineffably sad that mankind will learn and discover and at least partially understand so many things after I'm no longer around to appreciate how awesome our Universe -- "reality" itself -- really is.

Mellow bird

My heart knows what the wild goose knows,
I must go where the wild goose goes.
--Tennessee Ernie Ford

But where does the wild goose go?  And when?

I was wondering that today as I walked across campus -- keeping an eye on the Canada geese surrounding me on all sides.  Didn't  they used to stop by campus just twice a year, like Midwestern retirees, on their way south and north?  This year, they clearly haven't been going anywhere.  They were here in the summer, and they're here in the winter.

I can't recall ever seeing any formations of geese flying overhead.

The UW campus seems to suit them just dandy.  Lots of goosey treats snuggled in the lawns, apparently, just waiting to be eaten.   Students walk carefully around the munching geese as they walk from class to class.  The geese?  They aren't much inclined to get out of anyone's way.  Fearful, they are not.  They strut, they honk, they ... they leave their calling cards.  On the lawns, on the sidewalks.

Why aren't these migratory geese migrating, I wondered.  It's been a mild winter.  Maybe with the still unaddressed problem of global warming, the geese are losing their migratory instincts?  Maybe Seattle's becoming an all-year goose paradise?  Another thing to blame on the Republicans!

The Canada goose, or Branta canadensis, is native to our continent.  It's found from Mexico to the Arctic.  Canada geese do, in fact, migrate south to winter residences, and then back north again for summer.  But -- and this surprised me -- Seattle has always lain right smack in the middle of a narrow band of territory where the climate is so salubrious as to permit the birds to hang out year-around. 

Moreover, our local subspecies, Branta canadensis fulva, or the Vancouver Canada goose, has increasingly interbred with B.c. maxima, the Giant Canada goose, a subspecies that was once nearly extinct.  The Giant subspecies is nonmigratory by nature, and his half breed kids have inherited his lackadaisical attitude.  In other words, the entire species is becoming increasingly nonmigratory, regardless of where they live.

As Wikipedia puts it:

In recent years, Canada Goose populations in some areas have grown substantially, so much so that many consider them pests for their droppings, bacteria in their droppings, noise, and confrontational behavior. This problem is partially due to the removal of natural predators and an abundance of safe, man-made bodies of water near food sources, such as those found on golf courses, in public parks and beaches, and in planned communities.

And college campuses.  Indeed.  The Wikipedia writers also note the tendency of Canada geese to attack humans when they feel threatened.  They hiss.  They threaten back.  They charge.  If you're still around, they attack physically with tooth and claw.  Well, actually, with wing and beak. 

Sounds scary, but our campus birds are pretty mellow.  They know a good thing when they see it.  And -- despite all I say -- they're a pretty handsome bird.  They share a mutual tolerance with the equally mellow college students, and are actually kind of nice to have around.

Unless, of course, you want to sit on the lawn.

Cosmic joke

If you have a slowly-developing cancer, do you want to know about it?  This issue, in various forms, comes up frequently in the health care field.  Now it arises on a cosmic scale.

Just last year we were laughing and pounding each other on the back because we had -- probably -- discovered the Higgs Boson, right?  The "God particle"?   The particle that's a manifestation of the universal field pervading every cubic inch of the, well, Universe?  The field that gives what we perceive as "mass" to those bundles of concentrated energy that we perceive as "things"? 

Turns out that, metaphorically, we had discovered the MRI.  Today, we're told that the "MRI" reveals that we have incurable "cancer."

By calculating the mass of the Higgs particle, physicists now claim to be able to estimate the stability of the Universe.  Turns out it, it ain't.  Stable, that is. 

The physicists announce that a few tens of billions of years from now, pffft!  We'll be gone. 

"A little bubble of what you might think of as an ‘alternative' universe will appear somewhere and then it will expand out and destroy us," [physicist Joseph] Lykken said, adding that the event will unfold at the speed of light.

In other words, the cataclysmic event will reach us at the same instant as does the information advising us of the event's occurrence.  We'll cease existing, along with our families and our world, without even ever knowing what hit us. 

Oh, they try to reassure us that the sun will burn out in another 4.5 billion years anyway, so no big deal.  Please.  I have no doubt that within the next 4.5 billion years, mankind (or whatever has by then replaced mankind as intelligent life) will have figured out how to escape the solar system and find a more salubrious planet(s) circling a less short-lived sun on which to settle down, kick back, and watch TV. 

But I'm not so sure we'll find a way to escape the self-annihilating Universe.  To my way of thinking, it's pretty much all we have -- our very own little niche of space-time.  When it implodes, so does -- for all intents and purposes -- what we like to call "reality."  I realize that there may be billions upon billions of parallel universes living alongside us, worlds in which other Vikings raid other villages and other kids grow up under similarly bland Eisenhowers.  But barring discovery of  some way of visiting those universes -- or at least exchanging greetings with them -- I don't find their hypothetical existence to offer much consolation.

Dr. Lykken says that if the mass of the Higgs Boson had been just a tad greater or smaller, the instability leading to this calamity would not exist.

Well, damn!  That's really irritating, right? I wish they hadn't told us.

Golden isle

Three times I've been to the island of Rhodes:  The first time, while traveling alone for six weeks with a backpack throughout the eastern Mediterranean, hanging out in student hostels.  The second, an all-too-short trip to Italy and Greece with a former law school classmate.  And the third, overnight, aboard a Turkish gulet with family members, as a side-trip while exploring the near-by Turkish coast.

Rhodes was always Rhodes, timeless -- and yet, changing with the different periods of my life. As you might expect, it was that first visit, not long after finishing college, that lingers most strongly in my memories.  And it's those memories that are deliciously brought again to consciousness by my re-reading of Lawrence Durrell's Reflections on a Marine Venus. 

Durrell is best known for his fictional, somewhat Rashomon-esque Alexandria Quartet -- four novels I managed to devour one year on Maui, all in one week, arising each morning at dawn and reading on the patio for several hours until other family members finally came to life.  I'd be at a loss now to describe the story line; what I remember are the richly realized personalities of the characters and the haunting sense of life lived vividly in a fantastic and multi-layered Alexandria -- a city that no longer exists as described and, sadly, was always a fantasy of Durrell's imagination.

Durrell's short memoir of his days on Rhodes seems closer in tone and approach to the fictional Quartet than it does to his also excellent, but less impressionistic, memoir of life on Cyprus, Bitter Lemons, which I've discussed in an earlier post.   For Reflections on a Marine Venus is nothing if not impressionistic.

After spending World War II in Alexandria as a press attaché to the British embassy, Durrell was sent to Rhodes in 1945 to handle communications for the occupying British forces -- specifically, to publish newspapers in English, Turkish and Greek for the island's residents.  As described in his memoir, at least, his official journalistic activities seem to have been secondary to his social life and to his delight in returning to the Greek civilization that he loved so much.

Although times were hard -- he mentions the eating of Spam on several occasions -- he seems to have lived in a joyous dream world.  He had the company of British friends, both military and non-military, who shared to varying degrees his highly educated appreciation of history and nature.  His girlfriend from Alexandria came to live with him.  His job took him not only all over Rhodes, but throughout the Dodecanese island group of which Rhodes was the largest member.  He was fluent in Greek, and at ease in talking with everyone, from Orthodox abbots to illiterate fishermen.

The book discusses the Aegean as it was in 1945, contrasted at times with how it had been at the time of his earlier visits.  Durrell also passes on to his readers a trove of classical, medieval, and modern history and politics. 

Durrell has a well-developed aesthetic sense, and describes scenery in richly lyrical language.

The Aegean is still waiting for its painter -- waiting with all the unselfconscious purity of its lights and forms for someone to go really mad over it with a loaded paint-brush.  Looking down upon it from the sentinel's tower at Castello, from the ancient temple at Lindos, you begin to paint it for yourself in words.  Cerulean sky touched with white cirrus -- such fleece grows between the horns of nine-day goatlets, or on the cocoons of silkworms; viridian to peacock-tail green where the sea threshes itself out against the cliffs.  Prismatic explosion of waves against the blue sky, crushing out their shivering packets of colour, and then the hissing black intake of the water going back.  The billiard-green patch edged with violet that splashes the sea below Lindos.

At times, this literary ornamentation becomes a little tiresome -- Hemingway wouldn't have approved -- but in general it arouses in me a deep longing to live in his own un-hurried, un-touristed era, to see what he saw, and to feel what he felt.  

As I read, I recall my own memories of golden sunlight on marble temples; of the fortified city of the Templars, both forbidding and irresistably attractive; of the silver groves of olive trees; of the cozy harbor filled with fishing boats; of the "wine-dark" sea rolling in far below the high cliffs of Lindos.  The butterflies, the ceaseless buzzing of mid-day cicadas, the cold jugs of cheap local wine.  The outdoor table where your breakfast coffee and rolls are served -- whether graciously on linen, on a hotel terrace, or more convivially on plastic tables in the courtyard of a youth hostel.  The friendliness of the local Greeks, of course, but also of the fellow English-speaking travelers you ran into --  typical kids back home, I suppose, but kids whose minds and manners and sensitivities all seemed uplifted here, their curiosity heightened,  by exposure to the bright light of the Hellenic civilization, modern as well as classical, they found all about them.

Durrell's done it to me again.  I can never go back to being a happily indigent student, nor can I join him as a post-war British press attaché on a newly-liberated Greek island.  But Greece seems to call everyone, regardless of age or education or century.  I'd give much right now to be drinking strong coffee, staring at the blue Aegean, and listening to the steady buzz of the cicadas.

I guess I'll be making a fourth visit to Rhodes.  One of these days. 

Event in Siberia

In 1908, the "Tunguska Event" devastated 830 square miles of a remote area of Siberia.  The "event," an explosion over a thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, knocked down 80 million trees and broke windows hundreds of miles from the epicenter.

When I was young, I heard many possible explanations for the "event," including flying saucer activities, a collision between matter and anti-matter, or a tiny black hole passing through the earth. 

Today, it's almost universally agreed that the "event" was the result of a meteor or asteroid entering the atmosphere and exploding.  This hypothesis was not accepted at first; the explosion was so great and yet left no evidence of meteorite material on the ground.  It's now estimated that the object, over 300 feet in diameter, exploded at an altitude of three to six miles, the fragments burning and vaporizing before they could hit the ground.

Today's blast over Siberia (is Siberia a meteor-magnet?) was a firecracker by comparison.  According to the Associated Press, the object was about the size of a bus, and exploded with the force of about 20 Hiroshima bombs.  Furthermore, its life ended much higher above the ground -- somewhere from 12 to 32 miles, according to varying American and Russian estimates, shielding the ground to a large degree from the force of the explosion.

Very interesting scientifically, but unnerving.  Fortunately there were no fatalities.  But it reminds us how precarious not only our individual lives may be, but the existence of life on Earth itself.  The dinosaurs took a red card 66 million years ago when the earth was hit by an asteroid massive enough (six to nine miles in diameter) to survive the atmosphere and actually strike the Earth near the Yucatan, releasing energy of over one billion (yes, billion) equivalents to the Hiroshima bomb. 

It could happen again.  The Tunguska Event was a reminder, and today's little fireworks display was just another prompt.  Most of the thousand people injured were folks -- many of them school kids -- who ran to their windows to see what was happening when they saw a flash brighter than the Sun.   They arrived at the window just in time for the blast to arrive, shattering the window and piercing them with glass.

Too bad they didn't display the instinctive reaction of my own generation.  When I was a kid, if our schoolroom had been hit by a blinding flash of light from outside the window, we would each have dropped to the floor under our desk, circled one arm around our face, and thrown the other across the back of our neck. 

Waiting with hearts pounding for the end of civilization as we knew it.  

A reluctant pope

Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation today. The news stories all remark on the unusual nature of his decision:  Benedict will be the first pope since Celestine V to resign voluntarily, for his own reasons -- as opposed to resignation as part of a brokered deal to end a schism.

"Celestine V" doesn't trip off my tongue as a household name, despite my one-time study of medieval history. So I looked him up. 

Pietro of Morrone was a thirteenth century monk and hermit.  Following the death of Pope Nicholas IV in 1292, the College of Cardinals appeared to be in no rush to choose a successor.  In fact, after two years, the Holy See still remained vacant, the cardinals unable to choose between favorites of competing Italian families.

Actually, it was a small college.  Only eleven cardinals were entitled to vote.  (At present, 118 of the 209 cardinals are entitled to vote for a new pope, under rules adopted in 1970 that require a voting cardinal to be under the age of 80.)  It was the last time that the cardinals were allowed to roam about freely before a pope was elected.  Since that time, they've been kept locked up in a "papal conclave" (cum clave = "with a key") in the Vatican until they reach a decision.  In subsequent conclaves, strict rules were enforced, limiting the amount of food permitted the cardinals after a reasonable time had passed without a new pope being chosen.

Pietro, already well known for his sanctity, lost his patience after two years.  He sent the eleven cardinals a letter warning them of divine vengeance if they didn't get their act together.  The cardinals responded by unanimously choosing Pietro himself as the new pope.  Clearly appalled by this unexpected development, Pietro tried to resist his election, even fleeing physically. Finally, however, he was persuaded to accept the office.  He was coronated in 1294, taking "Celestine V" as his name.

The papacy at the time was a political force, contending with competing secular powers and suffering from influence from within by corrupt Italian families.  Celestine, famed for a holy life as a hermit, had neither the skill nor the stomach to manage the worldly affairs of the Church as it then existed.  He abdicated after serving as pope for a mere five months, stating his reasons as "the desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life." 

Who could blame him?

His successor, Boniface VIII, having encouraged Clementine in his decision to abdicate, had Pietro (né Clementine) seized and imprisoned as soon as he had assumed Pietro's former office.  The former pope spent ten months in captivity until he died.  His death has been attributed to "infected air," but some historians believe he was murdered on orders from Boniface.

As a consolation prize, I suppose -- although actually as a result of political pressure from French forces who had opposed the by-then-deceased Boniface VIII -- Celestine V was canonized in 1313 by Pope Clement V.

Unlike Celestine V, Benedict XVI did not simply throw up his hands and withdraw from an uncongenially active life.  Benedict has served to the best of his abilities, and by his own lights, in an office for which his temperament -- that of a scholar -- may not have particularly suited him.  He is resigning now, only when the frailities of old age are catching up with him.  Luckily, we live in a more civil age than that in which the hermit Pietro found himself.  We can rest confident that Benedict will be neither imprisoned nor done away with by his successor.

Instead, as do most of us, I wish him peace and enjoyment in his studies throughout his remaining years.